Afghan Runoff Election Will Not Create Legitimacy

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Malou Innocent, foreign policy analystminnocent@cato.org:

In Afghanistan, whether a second-round presidential election takes place or not, the fact remains there will not be a legitimate central government for some time to come.

Long-term success in counterinsurgency--the current U.S. strategy--depends on the legitimacy of the host nation's government. But from the lowliest traffic policeman to the highest levels of parliament, Afghanistan is full of corruption and graft. This pervasive corruption is contributing to the collapse of public confidence in the government and to the resurgence of the Taliban.

Neither defeating a large-scale insurgency, nor creating a legitimate central government in Kabul, is critical to keeping America safe. Counterinsurgency is both the most expensive option for the U.S. and the one least likely to succeed, so it makes little sense for the Obama administration to continue on this path.

Proponents of counterinsurgency, many of whom support the infusion of 40,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, need to come clean on the total cost of that strategy and start answering difficult questions. Is Afghanistan's corrupt central government worth fighting and dying for? How many hundreds of billions of dollars will America spend? How many U.S. and NATO soldiers will lose their lives? And is Afghanistan the most crucial place in the world for America to expend those resources?

Even if America were to commit several hundred thousand troops, decades of its time, and untold billions of dollars to Afghanistan, success would hardly be guaranteed and al Qaeda would simply shift its presence to other regions of the world. In this respect, it appears the current debate over Afghanistan has been an inadequate examination of core assumptions.

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